The fifth in John's choice of seven signs was the occasion when Jesus walked on the waters of the Sea of Galilee.

It is curious how both the miracles Jesus did that day, the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on the water, have been explained away. Some commentators, professedly Christian, would have us understand that nothing supernatural happened in either case; all that happened in the afternoon, we are told, is that the Lord's gesture in sharing out the contents of one small basket of loaves and fishes prompted everyone else to be as generous with theirs, with the result that there was enough for everyone. And Jesus did not literally walk on the water, they tell us. John's phrase in 6:19 can mean "on the seashore" ... the disciples saw Jesus walking, not on the sea, but on the seashore. They were so near to it by that time that the sight of Jesus wading out to meet them spurred them to a last big effort, and so their boat scraped on the shingles just as He came aboard.

Both interpretations, I firmly believe, are quite false. And anyone who offers them, I also believe, gives proof by doing so that he is as blind to the real meaning of what Jesus did as were the Jews who witnessed those things at the time.

Jesus Himself was distressed by this stubborn suspicion of everything He did. He did these things to make plain the truth of Who He was, and what He had come into the world to do. But so often, His actions had the opposite effect to the one He intended. It was as though the brighter He turned up the light by His actions, the tighter men screwed up their eyes to shut it out. And I think it important to see that when we force an argument about the literal truth of these miracles we are doing the same thing, and therefore do ourselves a positive mischief.

It will be worth our while to spend a few moments on this. We shall see better ...

WHO IT IS WHO COMES

The point of difficulty in all our Lord's miracles - to nail it down - is that Jesus, by the mere exercise of His will, could manipulate the physical elements of the natural world, turning water into wine (that happens all the time, by the way, all over the world in its vineyards), or multiplying bread (that also happens in our corn fields) and so on. What is thought incredible, I repeat, is that Jesus should do these things by the sheer exercise of His will.

But is it so incredible? In a more limited measure, this is a kind of power we all have at our own disposal.

I flip my fingers. The sinews of my wrist, the bones of my hand, clad in flesh and skin, have moved in response to the mere exercise of my will. Because I am lord of that bit of nature which is my body, it obeys me. We take that for granted, though no man can fully explain it. If Jesus is indeed God manifest in the flesh, and therefore Lord of the natural world which is His creation, why should it not obey Him?

(1st Point)

If He is that, there is nothing more mysterious in the fact that the winds and the waves should obey Him than that my limbs should obey me.

The answer to the question, "Who is this?", as Matthew again records it, is the only answer possible: "Truly, you are the Son of God."

Remember that these things were done among a people, the Jewish people, who believed absolutely in one God, the Creator of all things, Who sustains the world in being by the Word of His power.

"God it is Who makes the storm be still, and the waves of the sea are hushed," the Psalmist declares (107:29). "It is the Lord," wrote Isaiah (43:16), "Who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters."

And along comes Jesus and does these very things! There is no other conclusion a man can draw, as the Evangelists see it, than that Jesus is that Lord - the Lord of Nature and of Man - God, manifest in the flesh.

If modern scientific dogma forbids us to draw that conclusion, then only two options are open to us: either our scientific dogma requires us to question the facts; or the facts oblige us to question the dogma. You have to choose.

Christian dogma or scientific dogma ... they are both dogma. And if the scientist says, "Mine rests on the logic of observation," the Christian answers, "Mine rests on the logic of faith." And science, by definition, is simply unable to pronounce on the validity of faith. Science, by definition, restricts its field of enquiry to things visible and material. How then can it possibly pronounce on things invisible and spiritual?

Let me make the point as clear as I can, that you cannot draw conclusions from outside the range of your enquiry. It is as if, having restricted our field of enquiry to the ocean, we were to conclude that there were no such things as birds. Examine the ocean as exhaustively as you please, you will not find birds flying in it. Nor would it support your conclusion that there are none, if you were to produce theories out of your oceanography to prove that water is an impossible medium in which to sustain flight! The study of oceanography cannot, by definition, enable you to draw conclusions about the atmosphere. To pretend it could is simply silly. It is just as silly to pretend that science can supply conclusions about religion. They deal with quite separate areas.

I am not 'knocking' science, you understand. Within its own field, its method of acquiring knowledge is quite proper. But religion lies outside its field, and the methods of acquiring religious knowledge are quite different. You have to come at the truth of persons (and God is the Supreme Person) by a quite different route from the route by which you come at the truth of things. If you have trod the path of faith, then the miracle stories of the Gospels will open your eyes to spiritual truth. But if you have not trod the path of faith, and you insist on looking at the miracles only with the eyes of science, they will be an offence to you.

And so it comes about that the effect of these stories is to raise a question mark, not over the facts, but over you!

WHY IT IS HE COMES

But before we leave this discussion, let me say just one thing more.

No enquiry into the miracles of Jesus - regardless of any standpoint you may approach them from - can be in any way honest or fair which fails to take into account what His own avowed purpose was in doing them. The ends they served are at least as important as the mere fact of them.

(2nd point)

And nothing could be clearer from the Gospel records than that the Lord's miracles were of such a kind and wrought in such a way as to bring those for whom He did them into a vital, personal, life-changing relationship with the living God, Who was actually present in the person of Jesus. He did them for men's and God's advantage ... not His own. He never did them, merely to impress, like a Uri Geller, say, just to pack people in again at $50 a head to witness a repeat performance, or, like a David Koresh in Waco, Texas, to get them into his power on some sort of ego trip.

He used His powers to make men whole and relate them to God. And not until you can explain why He Who had these powers should have surrendered them when He surrendered up His life, to secure for men the one supreme advantage He coveted for them, namely the forgiveness of their sins and their reconciliation to God - not until you can explain that can you see the meaning of them. For the miracles of Jesus, and His Cross, speak the same language. They both reveal One Who used His powers to stoop beneath our burdens, make them His own, and lift them from us. As Matthew observes (8:17), having recorded some of the healing miracles, "He took our infirmities and bore our sins (a quote from Isaiah 53 which we associate with the Cross). His miracles and His Cross belong together: both by His touch, and by His stripes, we are healed. You miss the meaning of His miracles unless you see the purpose He served in doing them ... to make men whole and relate them to God.

That is why He comes.

HOW IT IS HE COMES

Now, finally, let us turn to the meaning of this particular miracle - the fifth in John's choice of seven signs. What does the Lord's coming to the disciples on the water mean?

Briefly it means, since He is the same yesterday, today and for ever - that always, the ascended Lord keeps watch above His own, and can be relied upon to come to the relief of His church, even in the darkest stormiest night of tribulation.

(3rd point)

There is, again, a most exciting feature about John's development of this theme that I want to share with you. We saw last time how - and why - John blended together the two signs of the walking on the water with the feeding of the five thousand. Now in the scheme of John's Gospel the meaning of each sign is elaborated in the episodes, and especially in the discourse that follows them. In these two signs, the meaning of the hillside meal is developed, as we saw last time. But when is the meaning of the Lord's coming to them on the lake developed?

And the answer - remarkably - is: not until chapters 14 to 16, when, under the shadow of the Cross, Jesus prepared His little company of disciples for the new era that would follow upon His Cross and Resurrection, His Ascension and His gift of the Spirit at Pentecost.

Once again, I invite you to note with me the points of correspondence between one passage of Scripture and another - this time, between the episode on the lake and the discourse in the upper room.

(1) 6:17 It was now dark, says John, and Jesus had not yet come to them. It is always dark, until Jesus comes to us isn't it? Note again, how telling John's use of language is!
And this, Jesus warns them in the Upper Room, is how they will find it in that dark interval when the Cross will take Him from them. "A little while, and you will not see me," He tells them (16:19) "... so you have sorrow now."

(2) 6:18 "The sea rose, because a strong wind was blowing."

"In the world," He tells them later (16:33) "you will have tribulation ... If they persecuted me, they will persecute you." (15:20).

The frail barque of the Church will again and again find itself tossed about in a stormy night of persecution and feel threatened and ready to go under. Sometimes it will seem as though there will never be an end to it. v. 19 "they rowed three or four miles ... till their hands were blistered, and their lungs were a living mass of searing pain, and the spindrift had all but blinded their stinging eyes" ... "The hour is coming," He said later (16:2) "when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God" ... it will get that bad.

(3) 6:19 "They saw Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing near to the boat."

Later, in the Upper Room, He will say: "A little while, and you will see me." (16:17) "I will not leave you desolate: I will come to you." (14:18)

Just as He withdrew Himself from the crowds that day by the lakeside, and disappeared into the hills ... to reveal Himself later only to His disciples - so He will say (14:19), "Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more: but you will see me; because I live, you will live also."
Then He says, "In that day, you will know that I am in the Father, and the Father in me." In other words, it will be the Father Himself Who will come to you in me.

(4) 6:20 And just here, we must notice a most remarkable thing. In 6:20, Jesus says to the frightened disciples, "It is I." The words He used were in fact (in their Greek translation) ego eimi - the equivalent of the Old Testament name for God Himself - "I AM."

God it was Who came to those men toiling in the storm, in the person of His Son - as it will always be God Himself Who comes to us in the person of Christ when we receive Him.

There can be no mistaking John's meaning here. He has so told the story that it is clearly a literal fulfilment of a passage in the Psalms which described an action that is emphatically God's action. Bear John's narrative in mind as you hear these words of the Psalm again.

Psalm 107:25-30:
For he commanded, and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven, they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their evil plight; they reeled and staggered like drunken men, and were at their wits' end. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they had quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.

When Jesus comes to you in your distress, He comes to you in all the power of the eternal God; His is the power by which He saves.

"The Lord will come: His footsteps cannot err.
He plants His footsteps on the sea, and rides upon the storm."

Always, His coming brings God to us.

(5) 6:20 Again, as Jesus says in 6:20 "Be not afraid, it is I," so He will say in the Upper Room (14:1), "Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (14:27)
"My peace I give to You," He will say (14:27), just as His coming to them into the boat calms the storm.

(6) 6:21 And as you read in 6:20, "Then they were glad to receive Him into the boat, and presently, the boat was at the land to which they were going. So He will say to them in the Upper Room, "I will receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also."
He will surely bring us to our desired haven.

CONCLUSION

Do you see the picture that has been building up?
The Lord's withdrawal into the hills to pray, His watch over them in their trial from those heights, His coming to them on the sea in the darkness of the storm, and His mastery of the elements so as to bring them safely to their journey's end - all that is a parable ... a parable of His going to the Father by way of the Ascension where He ever lives to make intercession for us, and where He keeps watch above His own in all the tribulations of our discipleship, and comes to us in even our severest trials, in the person of the Spirit, to be with us, and to be in us, and to bring us surely to the goal of all our journeying.

"So you have sorrow now," He says to us, "but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you."

They would see in their experience on the lake at night a prefiguring of that promise. They had sorrow then - all night - but they saw Him again and they rejoiced, for they were glad to receive Him into the boat.

So it would ever be, for in the gift of the Holy Spirit, He Himself would come again to dwell with them through all their trials.

"In the world, you will have tribulation," He would say to them, "but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

And they would remember how He had overcome the world of tossing waves that had threatened to engulf them.

And all this we must appropriate as being true, now, for us, just as it was then, for them.

It is a pity that John 14 has become associated almost exclusively with death and bereavement. I would not wish to weaken at all the real comfort those promises do give at such a time, but they are promises to lay hold of at many another time in our lives when the wind is against us. He will come to us on many a stormy night before the last night that ends in the dawning of eternal day, and our hearts will rejoice.

"Lo, I am with you always," He said ... and through His Spirit, in our hearts, He is.